| Details | At 1 pm, join Freer and Sackler Curator of South and Southeast Asian Art Debra Diamond in Freer gallery 1 for an intimate pre-film look at treasures of the Mughal collection. View the film trailer. “I’ll never forget the first time I saw Shiraz,” raved Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times, “and if you take a chance and take in this gorgeous silent extravaganza, a landmark of Indian cinema, you will surely feel the same.” An astonishing treasure of the silent cinema, Shiraz is one of three cinematic collaborations between pioneering star/producer Himansu Rai and German-born director Franz Osten. Shot on location in India, Shiraz was restored by the British Film Institute from original elements some ninety years after its initial release. Ambitious and elegant, the film takes creative license with the story of the life and death of Mumtaz Mahal (Enakshi Rama Rau), the seventeenth-century Mughal empress whose early demise inspired her husband, Shiraz (Rai), to construct the Taj Mahal. Inventing a backstory involving bandits, slavers, and nobility-in-disguise, Rai and Osten give us a robust romantic adventure, filled with teeming crowd scenes and location shots that double as an invaluable documentary. Description courtesy of Juno Films. (Dir.: Franz Osten, United Kingdom/Germany/India, 1928, 105 min., DCP, b&w, silent with English intertitles) |
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